Ten years looking for new antibiotics: how are we doing?

How’s the campaign to get more antibiotics going?” We still sometimes get asked this in pub or supermarket. Not surprising really, after more than ten years on the job. And to answer that question we can think of no one better than the acute Julia Kollewe of the Guardian whose piece is as good a state-of- play message ( Pipeline of New Drugs to fight superbugs is “worryingly thin,” experts warn) as any we’ve seen for some time[1] So, what’s the score? How indeed is humanity meeting this existential challenge?

Not too well, actually. The bad news is that antibiotic resistant infections are still very much on the rise. More than 40% of known antibiotics lost potency between 2018 and 2023.[2] The number of antimicrobial projects run by big pharmaceutical companies has actually declined in the last five years. But you can read these and many other statistics from Julia and her linked organisations for yourself.

There are some bright spots: hats off to the UK’s GSK ,Japan’s Shionugi and Otsuka, and certain valiant American firms in California. But America’s real giant, Pfizer, seems to be falling off the pace-not surprising we think, given the political end cultural climate they now have to work in.

But for us Julia’s killer trope was to consult the learned Ara Darzi, an expert in cancer treatment. Who adduces the following gloomy thought:

New therapies mean cancer can be fought, “but then sadly patients succumb to an infection that was treatable a decade ago”, Lord Darzi said at the launch of the AMF report, adding: “You don’t win a game if you have three good strikers and your defence is weak.”

Cancer is indeed a deadly illness. And cures should be sought. But what’s the point if the poor patient dies three days later from an infection? That is why your interest in new antibiotics is still important, gentle reader: please keep supporting us.

[1] Pipeline of new drugs to fight superbugs is ‘worryingly thin’, experts warn | Pharmaceuticals industry | The Guardian

[2] Tools to fight AMR exist, but industry-wide action is needed to tilt the battle against superbugs | Access to Medicine

#antibiotic resistance #microbiology #health #medicine #drugs

Beyond the Nation State #2: Climate Change and all that

Global warming is here, real, now and it’s getting faster.[1] God knows how many times you’ve been beaten over the head with that , and we loathe to insult your intelligence. But we live in a world of rising temperatures, melting glaciers, collapsing ocean currents, dwindling food supplies and the massive shifts in human migrations which all of these entail. And this set against the possibility of a world which could be cleaner, healthier and politically stable-consequences which a safe climate would bring.[2] So-why bring it all up again, right in the middle of a massive, near-world, war? Because we think it is the ne plus ultra example of this series’ main purpose. The existential threat of global warming is beyond the capacity of a world organised into nation states.

We take today’s reasons from History and Information Theory: is that eclectic or what? The first shows that every time nation states are faced with the issue, they duck it. As we noted before (LSS 30 8 23) the 1970s oil shocks didn’t trigger a transition; they triggered a doubling‑down on fossil dependence in the name of “energy security”. Kyoto collapsed[3] the moment the United States decided it didn’t suit its short‑term interests, and Canada followed like a polite echo. And Information theory explains why: because the nation‑state is, at heart, an information‑processing machine optimised for short‑term competitive advantage. It filters every signal — scientific, moral, existential — through the question: does this keep us ahead of our rivals in the next decade? Long‑term planetary risk is systematically down‑weighted, not because leaders are cowards, but because sovereignty itself is a bandwidth problem. No single state can act at the scale or speed required, and pretending otherwise is a comforting fantasy.

Once again we stress: we do not advocate the abolition of sovereign nation states, as to abolish them would invite utter anarchy. But, just as national governments sit above local governments there must now be some sort of global authority to deal with the dangerous, the pressing, the existential risk of utter ecological and economic collapse. And just to cheer you up, we’ve got several more like this, so keep reading.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00745-z?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=366c08b912-nature-briefing-daily-20260309&utm_medium

[2]https://theconversation.com/four-ways-to-tackle-health-and-climate-together-and-lift-millions-of-people-out-of-poverty-276696?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=L [3] Kyoto Protocol – Wikipedia

#climate change #global warming #geopolitics #nation #state #sovereignty #meteorology

Solar power: a ray of sunshine in dark times

Just when you thought we were becoming too gloomy we cheerfully present a story of sunny optimism which we hope will lighten your day. It’s via the work of Simon Kuper of the Financial Times, [1] a writer we have showcased here before. Like many FT writers, Simon’s work is behind a paywall. So although we believe that crossing that wall is well worth the cost, we have provided a summary of Simon’s main points. Followed by our own riff, which you will note has been carefully kept separate so that we do not ascribe meanings where none were intended by today’s source author.

SIMON SAYS

The advent of cheap reliable solar panels, and efficient batteries to store their produce, is working wonders in poor countries. Imagine cash-strapped villagers who have waited generations for their -ah, malfunctioning– States to provide power grids and generators suddenly witnessing the arrival of cheap reliable panels! Suddenly everyone gets a fridge, a phone charger, and goodness knows what else at prices all can afford. At once their country leapfrogs all those installations like pylons and dams which our GCE Geography books told us were essential, and bounds into the 21^st century. Proof positive is in the pricing. The cost of panels is down a whacking 99% on what they were in 1975 and 95% on 2007. Being clever sorts of fellows, sub-Saharan Africans imported 60% more panels last year alone. OK, solar isn’t quite so hot for industry, as Simon notes. But when it comes to everything else-transport, everyday things like computers, it’s utterly feasible. Which must be a start on at least reigning back the vertiginous rise in emissions which is still the most pressing threat to our survival. (sorry to antibiotics fans everywhere)

LSS SAYS

1 Why bother with nuclear fusion down here when there is a huge nuclear fusion reactor for free a handy one astronomical unit away?

2 Solar panels are following the exact laws of economics everything else new did: colour tvs, cars, computers, cameras, fridges(OK that’s enough devices-ed) Once the research is completed and mass production starts, costs fall away.

3. This also casts an interesting retrospective light on the warnings of past decades: that solar was too expensive, wouldn’t work in hot countries, or could never be stored, etc etc. etc. Our legal team has advised us not to speculate about anyone’s motives or affiliations, so we won’t. Even the most honest and well‑meaning people can be mistaken: we’ll leave it at that.

4. And finally: whatever anyone says now, the implications are clear. Renewables are on track to dominate. Those who oppose them may find themselves stranded on a cultural and technological shoreline, like so many ageing Miss Havishams. Good luck with that.

THE REFERENCE {1]

Because the showcase article is behind a paywall, the best we can do is show you a picture which may serve in a good search engine such as Google. From there you may access via the paywall if you wish. Once again we strongly urge that you do: because the FT is a great source of quality information, with many, many other good writers. We get no money whatsoever for this, we just honestly believe it.

Aditya Chakraborrty nails the UK life‑expectancy crisis (we just happened to get there first)

No one would ever accuse us of blowing our own trumpet. Humility-intellectual, moral personal- is the name of our game. Most of the time. So when a writer whom we admire as much as Aditya Chakraborrty of the Guardian [1] picks up on a theme we’ve covered here before (twice) we won’t mention that at all. Well, not very often anyway. We won’t even mention the two main blogs(LSS 21 12 21; 19 2 25) we penned on the subject, nor any of the others. Instead we shall cut to Aditya’s excellent piece, for the benefit of newer readers to this blog. If that’s not modesty. well, we’re not sure what is.

Drawing on the work of some pretty learned experts Aditya points out that UK Life Expectancy has pretty much stalled for most people. In fact, it seems to be in decline for many. And all at a time of unprecedented increases in medical knowledge( we cover a lot of them here too) and general popular awareness of things like nutrition and wellness. And he links the poor performance to a whole slew of statistics on social inequality and policy choices made by various governments:

Yet in a society as unequal as the UK, how well or sick you are depends on how rich you are……..That is injustice. It could be improved, but British governments have made choices that mean poorer children get old sooner and die earlier than richer children.

He even points out the comparison with similar statistics from the old Soviet Union, which showed them to be in deep, deep trouble long before the whole system collapsed. Just as , ahem, did we. gentle readers

All of which leads us to a few simple conclusions. First if you want the good stories early, read this humble self effacing little blog. Secondly we believe Aditya, his experts, the ones we cited like Emmanuel Todd and a whole lot of other authors like Wilkinson and Pickett [2]and Thomas Picketty[3] who saw this utter disaster coming years ago. And not just in the UK. What depresses us is that we will never understand why people buy the newspapers and watch the TV channels that have made it all possible.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/06/uk-death-healthy-life-expectancy-decline-sta

[2]Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane, 2009.

[3]Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

#health #life expectancy #nutrition #inequality #economics

Things Beyond the Nation State #1 Introduction

Identity, belonging and how this species organises itself in groups has been a recurrent theme on this blog since we started back in the pandemic days of 2020. We’ve surveyed the work of theorists like Amy Chua: pondered sports affiliation, tribe and nation, and the several ways of belonging to each. Considered experiments in psychology and behaviour. Even speculated if there might be a World Government waiting in the decades to come. Yet up to now nothing has superseded the Nation State as the only successful and enduring method of organising our multifarious hostile tribes into larger confederations. By which they obtain common benefits of defence and low mutual trading barriers, the two sine qua nones of all statecraft. (everything else is method)

The trouble with this comforting settlement is size. Each little kingdoms of Anglo Saxon England-Wessex, Mercia and the rest-was perfectly able to provide its residents needs for hundreds of years. Until a bunch of pesky Vikings came along and nearly drove them all to utter destruction. Only by forming a larger unit, England, were the Anglo Saxons able to survive and prevail: And England became their nation in turn. A lesson repeated across many lands and times. So powerful that it begs the question: are our current polities, even the largest, now too small too indebted, to mutually jealous, to cope with the existential questions now born into the world? We repeat: this is not a call to abolish nation states which can and should continue to exist, But it may be a call for a next tier or organisation to act on those problems, and only those problems, which only it has the competence to address.

We think those problems are Global Warming, Pollution, Migration, sudden Catastrophes like pandemics, economic Inequality and Security risks from things like AI and nuclear weapons All are pressing and all interconnected at some level or other. You may suggest more, gentle readers. But in the next few weeks we will do our best to list them into some sort of order and try to consider some of the problems they pose, for you to think about. For we know of few hard and fast answers. We hope you will join us on this journey and will welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas. Keep ‘em coming.

#global warming #nuclear war #pandemic #volcano #AI #pollution #economics #history

VIR 5500: Promising new treatment for Prostate Cancer

Immunotherapy, which involves training the body’s own defence systems such as T-cells to attack cancerous tissues, has been one of the medical success stories of the last twenty years. Yet some cancers still demonstrate a certain recalcitrance in the face of the new ministrations. Unfortunately, one of them is Prostate cancer, the most common form of cancer in men, killing up to 1.5 million of them annually. But not only does this report by Nicola Davis of the Guardian [1] offer hope of real progress, it has some deeper lessons for those of us in the evidence-based thought-modulated community(EBTM). Which means you, gentle reader.

All immunotherapy depends on T Cell engagers (TCEs) which form a bridge between certain sites on the T Cell and on the tumour cell. Anyone working with them to try to cure prostate cancer encounters two difficulties. Generally, traditional TCEs can be pretty indiscriminate, leading to side issues like massive cytokine storms and problems with dose toxicity. Specifically, prostate cancer cells have a knack of resisting T cells, making immunotherapy especially hard to apply. Now a team led by the admirable Professor de Bono in collaboration with Vir Biotechnology[2] is trialling a new form of molecular cloaking treatment called VIR-5500 which masks the T-cells right up to the moment when they are in contact with the prostate cancer cells. A protease in the malign cells then activates the T-cells, unleashing their curative effect. We won’t spoil Nicola’s summary of the results, which you can read in her article. But you will find them impressive to say the least.

All of which goes to show what curiosity-driven basic science can achieve when money is spent on it. VIR -5500 could not have existed without decades of molecular immunology, protein engineering, tumour cytology and many other disciplines hidden away in unmanly places like university departments and research institutes. Which is ironic, because many of the butch types at the Dog and Duck, who routinely perform their masculinities by loudly decrying scientific research into things like climate change, will be the first to suffer when prostate cancer comes along. But History always teaches the same lesson to the deluded in the end.

[1] Researchers praise ‘stunning’ results of new prostate cancer treatment | Prostate cancer | The Guardian

[2] Our Strategy | Vir Biotechnology

#prostate cancer #immunotherapy #t cells #health #medicine #science #molecular biology

Did Christopher Columbus start an Ice Age?

Photo by Balu00e1zs Gu00e1bor on Pexels.com

We know that rising levels of carbon dioxide are driving climate change. We know the mechanism, we know the statistics, and people all across the world are feeling the consequences in floods, fires, crop failures and migrations. But has CO₂ changed the climate before? More pertinently has human meddling with this potent greenhouse gas already unleashed a disaster or so? To our astonishment, some people think it has Stand by for an amazing idea we got from the BBC podcast In Our Time [1] of which more below.

When Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492 it was not to an empty, underpopulated hemisphere. Both American continents contained thriving populations of agriculturalists. Now, 1492 was indeed the start of huge exchanges of many things-foods, cultures, languages-between Old World and New. But among the earliest and most significant were European diseases like smallpox and measles to which the American populations had no resistance whatsoever. The result was a catastrophic mortality which carried off between 80 and 90% of them.[2] The abandoned farms and croplands quickly reverted to nature. Meaning a sudden massive capture of carbon dioxide which began to cool the planet quickly, leading to the famous Little Ice Age which reached its coldest in the early Seventeenth Century.

And the evidence ? The Little Ice Age is an incontrovertible fact. [3] Ice core samples and climate records indicate the early 17^th century as suffering some of the coldest decades in recorded history. But correlation is not cause, as we always say at this blog. Overall, it looks as if the trend towards the dip had started centuries before, and the recovery was still going on centuries afterwards. The cooling may well have been regional rather than global and there is strong evidence to suggest that other factors such as volcanoes and solar cycles may have played their part. However, that CO₂ is indeed such a potent greenhouse gas makes its role as a contributor to the Little Ice Age all too plausible. And that is what worries us about levels of the stuff shooting up so dramatically in our own times. Although not proven to the levels of certainty like tigers bite and smoking gives you cancer, we think there is enough here for further research, both by scientists and by you, gentle reader. And now on to our thanks.

Because In Our Time,now presented by the urbane Misha Glenny, is one of the greatest cornucopias of intellectual treasure you will find. gentle readers. By spending an hour in its company once a week you will discover the most eclectic range of fine subjects -Science, History, Art, literature, what have you, all presented by leading experts at Tertiary education level or above(see LSS 9 6 22) In an age where so much media chases sensation over substance, its very existence is a reminder that rationality and intelligence still have a place. And we know we have that on the Highest Authority: read this if you don’t believe us:

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver. And the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her

Proverbs 3 12-15

[1] BBC Radio 4 – In Our Time, The Columbian Exchange

[2] Columbian exchange – Wikipedia

[3] Reconciling ice core CO2 and land-use change following New World-Old World contact

#global warming #pandemic #columbus #in out Time #little ice age

Trump, Tariffs and the arc of History

President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300037) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

Availability bias: it’s one of the great errors of the human mind, from selection of romantic partners to the decisions of statesmen on whether to enter major geopolitical wars. We get cross because a Minister says this, or a football manager makes that decision. So it’s refreshing to come across an article that puts the stories flickering across our screens into a broader context. And this(uncredited) opinion piece from the Guardian does exactly that. Weaving threads of tariffs, Supreme Courts, President Trump, China, and economics it finds a historical parallel for all that’s going on-and why it matters.[1]

The writer asseverates that Mr Trump is trying to restore a lost America of the 1970s when its manufacturing and technological capacities were unchallenged. Now China, which has concentrated on manufacturing, has obtained an edge which increasingly threatens the US global position. And once that happens, the consequences for powers that go down are not nice. The historical parallel is clear: Britain neglected its manufacturing base from the 1870s onwards, relying on financial services and the strength of sterling to maintain its dominance. In the end it was displaced by the manufacturing strength of the USA, and the inevitable loss of reserve currency status was the final nail in the coffin of British Power.[2]

Unlike many, we do not question Mr Trump’s intelligence, nor patriotism by his own lights at least. But these qualities may not ensure optimal decisions. Nostalgia is a dangerous force. For often the golden ages it longs for were exactly the times when the fatal decisions were made. America chose the path of financialisaton over manufacturing in the 1980s : so to want to go back there is to want to repeat that mistake. Mr Trump has come too late to arrest America’s decline, whatever he decides about tariffs, immigrants or anything else. The basic problem of the United States is a hopelessly skewed balance of money and information between rich and poor, Until that is fixed, the trajectory will continue one way.

[1] The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariffs: a nostalgia that misreads a changed world | Editorial | The Guardian

[2] Barnett, Correlli. The Collapse of British Power. New York: William Morrow, 1972. ISBN: 0688000010

#economics #history #USA #china #great britain #reserve currency #financialisation #manufacturing

IsoDDE: mixed-race love child of Biology and Information Science has a great future

One of the most exciting stories we have followed at this blog is the way new AI systems are suddenly speeding up the production of new drugs and other biological molecules (see LSS 1 12 20 et al) This week has seen another exciting step in the form of a new AI tool from Isomorphic labs. Read this piece, Drug discovery AI is akin to Alpha Fold 4 from Nature Briefing

Isomorphic Labs — a biopharmaceutical spin-off of Google DeepMind — has unveiled a new, powerful artificial-intelligence tool for predicting how proteins interact with drugs. The tool, called IsoDDE, can outperform other AI systems such as the open-source Boltz-2 and physics-based methods at determining binding affinity between a protein and potential drug. These skills have impressed scientists, but they highlight that IsoDDE is proprietary, and the technical paper that accompanied its announcement offers scant insight into how to achieve similar results.

Nature | 5 min read

The research and development of new drugs is one of the most arduous tasks that befalls the intelligent community. The central problem is pretty simple: how do you get your marvellous new drug to stick to a protein, and make the whole thing work the way you want it to? Proteins are not hard rigid statues of marble: they are soft, spongy and change shape in unpredictable ways when you put a new drug up against them. That’s the gap in function into which all that time, money and thought disappears. In theory new AI tools like Iso DDE (and others on the way no doubt) should rapidly speed the whole process by predicting myriad of possible shape changes as the molecular systems are brought together.[2] Moreover, to predict new bits on the target protein which we hadn’t thought of, where the drug might be made to stick to, And possibly, to crunch the numbers around all those new bits of protein, polypeptide and other molecules which are thrown up in the research process, to see if they have any likely uses as well. When we were young, Information Science and Biology were completely different disciplines with different faculties, buildings and career paths. It’s funny to watch them coming together so fructiferously, to produce such exciting offspring

[2]https://storage.googleapis.com/isomorphiclabs-website-public-artifacts/isodde_technical_report.pdf

#drugs #medicines #researh #AI #biology #health

Can your cat save you from cancer?

Cats: our feline friends: variously cute, lovable, admirable and beautiful. They’re becoming more and popular as pets. Which brings several advantages in the treatment of cancer, believe it or not. Like dogs, their nearest rival, they are exposed to all the same molecular slings and arrows of everyday domestic life-cleaning products- foods, fuels, what have you-as we are. But we also share more genetic material with them then we do with our canine chums. Moreover cancer is rapidly becoming a major cause of mortality in middle aged to elderly cats just as it is to humans in that stage of. It’s a set up for ground breaking studies. And Miguel Ángel Criado for El País and Helen Briggs of the BBC have two excellent reports on a groundbreaking study which has done exactly that. (teaser: one of these links is in Spanish, and one in English-can you guess which?)

The study, co-led by the learned Dr Louise van der Weyden of the Wellcome-Sanger Institute is the first really large map of oncogenic(cancer related) aspects of the cat genome. It’s full of intriguing details, which you can read by clicking on the marvellous articles which we have hyperlinked. But we could not resist a tiny spoiler, concerning Dr Weyden’s discoveries around the gene FBXW7 , a tumour‑suppressor gene whose loss helps drive aggressive forms of human breast cancer. Intriguingly, the same gene is frequently mutated in feline tumours. This cross‑species echo suggests that cats and humans may share a conserved vulnerability in the FBXW7 pathway, making our kitties unexpected partners in understanding this cancer mechanism.

And the conclusion? We need to help cats to help us. You could give to a cancer charity [3] You could give to a cat charity[4] But knowing our readers to be generous types we have included sufficient hyperlinks for you to do both!

[1] El mayor mapa genético del cáncer de los gatos abre la puerta a tratamientos compartidos con humanos | Salud y bienestar | EL PAÍS

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3n7j8xyqo?at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_type=web_link&at_format=link&at_ptr_name=facebook_page&at_link_origin=BBC_N

[3] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/get-involved/donate?

[4] Cats Protection | UK’s Largest Cat Welfare Charity

#cancer #breast cancer #cats #medicine #health #research #genome #oncology